"Assault weapons" ban in WA

Not again!

Today the office of Washington's Attorney General has released the following press release:

(Source with the full text).

Since you are on this page, I assume that you already know why "assault weapon" ban is a stupid piece of legislation. If not, here is a fantastic explanation why it cannot possibly work: http://www.assaultweapon.info.

To understand how to correctly confront it, as a gun owner, you do need to understand why this thing keeps surfacing again and again and again despite overwhelming experimental evidence of its ineffectiveness. Once you understand its origins, you will know what to do about it.

So far the most frequently advanced theories inside the gun community are as follows:

• Leftist politicians who advance it are idiots, and,
• They hate freedom

Without addressing the merit - or lack thereof - of the aforementioned arguments, let me submit that the politicians who advanced to the state and national level - even the ones who are not especially brilliant - are at least sufficiently attuned to the demands of modern politics, of which there are two - money and votes, where money is necessary to attract votes.

Politicians who ignore the drive for money and votes do not survive in the public arena for very long.

I would further submit that there is not much money in the firearms game - at least not compared to other lobbying venues, since the entire gun industry is smaller than 10% of just Microsoft alone.

Ergo, the real reason politicians advance gun control legislation is because it is a popular red meat issue - and they can demonstrate "caring" without doing any real work and potentially angering any of the moneyed special interests.

The gun control legislation is particularly popular in the cities, where crime is more of a problem, and guns are generally viewed as tools of murder. Incidentally, this is the reason gun control is more popular with Democrats, who tend to cluster in big cities, rather than Republicans, who tend to be rural. Confirming this theory is the observation that Democrats from rural states - such as Howard Dean (who was endorsed eight times by NRA as VT governor) or Bernie Sanders - are more gun friendly, and Republicans from big cities - such as Bloomberg - are more for gun control.

Let me reiterate - the politicians (who are mostly Democrats) are for gun control because their electorate - the city dwellers - wants gun control. This is why trying to elect Republicans as a way to preserve gun rights cannot and does not work - the pro-gunness of Republicans is just one more reason why they cannot be elected to a public office in a big city.

And trying to elect more Republicans to the national scene is just like trying to reduce the amount of population in the cities - it won't work.

For example, there was not one Republican candidate for a single City Council position in 2015 election season in Seattle. Not one.

So what should gun owners do? Are our rights doomed?

The only effective way to go after the problem is to address its source, and in this case the source is the electorate.

And this brings me back to the AWB. While (almost) every gun owner knows that this is one of the biggest loads of crap ever sold to an electorate, the people who have only seen firearms in Hollywood movies have no idea.

They don't know that AR-15 functions just like any other semiautomatic gun. They don't know that it is not any more "efficient at killing" than any common pistol. They have no idea how easy it is to insert a fresh 10 round magazine - or that majority of actual real "weapons of war" - pistols in WWII - used 10 round magazines. They don't know that rifles - all rifles - kill less than 300 people a year in the US, less than hammers. Heck, they don't even know that two thirds of gun-related deaths are suicides.

And this is why AWB is in theory very easy to defeat - most of the people, when presented with actual data rather than partisan rhetoric - tend to turn around and stop supporting this legislation. I have seen this happen over and over and over on online forums, with friends and family.

The easiest way to defeat AWB is by educating the voters in a factual, non-partisan way.

The problem, however, is that gun community has been largely unsuccessful at reaching people outside its own echo chamber. People grumble to each other in gun forums, but they rarely get to present their point of view to the uninitiated.

Have you ever seen a NRA ad explaining the many problems with "assault weapons" ban on Facebook? Have you seen TV ads which would explain the problem beyond standard partisan bullet points?

Me neither. And I want to change this. Here is how.

Contest!

Precise Shooter will sponsor a contest for the best educational Facebook ad about "assault weapons" ban. Here are the rules:

• Prize! The winner will get a combination of AR-15 stripped upper and lower receivers made by Anderson.
• The winner needs to be over 21 and pass the background check at our Lynnwood store. If you live outside Seattle area, we will ship your receiver to the FFL of your choice - but you will be responsible for the transfer fees there.
• To win, you need to create a Facebook ad which will garner the biggest number of "likes". Clarification 9/21/2016: running multiple ads is allowed, and the likes from all of them - as long as they all are initiated by the same person - will be combined and count towards a single total.
• There will be one winner. If there are multiple campaigns with the same number of likes, one will be selected by a random drawing (and we will come up with a few second place prizes for the rest).
• The ad needs to be non-partisan, educational in nature, and factually correct (i.e. it should not make false claims).
• If the ad is promoted, it needs to go to WA State residents, and have no other qualifications (for example, it should not be restricted to gun owners).
• The contest will run until 12/1, and the winning ad will be announced here on 12/10. All entries need to be sent to use by 00:00am on 12/1/2016.

And this is it. You create a post, you promote it, people like it - you win. It is up to you what the ad should be - a test post, a link to an existing page (such as http://www.assaultweapon.info) - it does not need to be your original work even - anything that would educate the most people in the most positive way and chance the biggest number of minds.

This thread on Reddit is a great source of research that you may find useful.

To win, you need to send us the link to the page you were promoting, and the screen shot of the campaign that you were running (if any, with the target demographics clearly visible). The email to use when communicating with us about the contest is assaultweaponinfo@preciseshooter.com.

A few things to know about Facebook advertising.

First, even a small amount of money creates tons of views. $10, $15, $25 will bring a large number of viewers.

Second, Facebook does allow gun-related ads - as long as they don't lead to a place where guns or ammunition is traded. So if you have a gun store, for example, you would not be able to put the ad on your store's page - you will need to create a separate page for it.

Facebook does initial classification of the ad algorithmically - by running image recognition on the images within the ad, or on the page where the ad leads. If the images contain firearms, there are good chances that the ad will be rejected, because it automatically classifies it as a gun store. This is fine - you simply appeal the rejection, a human looks at it within a few days, and your ad gets approved. Just plan ahead for this extra time needed for approval!

If you decide to participate - thank you in advance! Whether you play to win, or play to play, I am confident that together we can explain our point of view to the critical mass of voters in Washington State, and ensure the defeat of this senseless legislation.